We often forget that grace and karma are far from the same thing. We have this idea that as we become better and better people and do more and more church stuff, God will have more reasons to provide grace for us. We all should know that God grants us unrelenting grace upon request, and yet we live as if his love is conditional. We live as if God killed his son just so he could save a bunch of people who deserved it… that’s just silly.
Yet here we are. We won’t accept God’s grace because we don’t deserve it. Stupid pride. Stupid humans. We are stupid Christians.
I read a book that influenced me pretty heavily called “O2” by Richard Dahlstrom; it is all about the ebb and flow of faith and specifically ministry. He theorizes that most modern Christians find themselves at either of two extremes, where they are either inhaling or exhaling constantly. They either serve constantly and pour out all their hearts into their ministries, or the other way around, they go to church and every small group during the week, but never actually do anything to help others. Even worse, most churches facilitate this by always asking the gifted folks to lead events and by asking the seemingly “not-so-gifted” folks to come to every event that the gifted folks put on. Sadly, when it comes to love I find the church is in much the same boat, with the majority of us being those who exhale and avoid inhaling as much as possible. My Nana gave me the saddest picture of this today.
I was visiting my grandmother (we call her Nana) in the hospital today after church and when we were alone we began talking about some more personal things. She talked about how surprised she was that this stomach problem had come on so suddenly and how she was so surprised that her issue is one that can kill if not operated on quickly. She mentioned she was so thankful for her relatives who took her into the ER and that she could be operated on so quickly. Then she started to change her tone. She said maybe it would have been a good time for her to go. Tears started coming to her eyes as she said that she was worried she was living too long and that she was becoming a burden to her family.
What you have to know about my Nana is that she cared for my Papa (her husband) for years and years before he finally passed in 2004. It was her whole life to care for him and when he passed she hardly knew what to do with her self. For along time she would still sign cards, “From Nana and Papa” and would hardly talk about anything else. When she finally began moving on she started caring for some friends of hers who weren’t able to get around quite as well as she. She would take them to the doctor when they needed or stop by and check up on them.
When my sisters and I were young we were home schooled and we would go over to her house once or twice every week and she spoiled us rotten. She would make waffles and a bowl of our favorite cereal for us and bring it out to us on a little tray as soon as we arrived and plopped down on her couch to watch TV. When my mom was a kid her and my Papa both worked a lot to give her the best they could manage; she was their only child.
And now, after eighty-six years of caring for other people, she doesn’t want us to care for her. She doesn’t want to be a “burden” to us even though she’s cared for our family for so long and she just started having problems last week. She’s asking us not to care for her and it’s a bit like saying, “Please, stop loving me.”
Riding back from my visit with her this afternoon, I wasn’t five minutes from the hospital before the tears came to my eyes. I couldn’t understand why I was crying. We have no reason to think that Nana is going to pass away soon and for the most part our visit was very pleasant. She’ll probably be out of the hospital in just a few days and yet I hurt and I wept. I started to pray and asked God to “soften her heart and to have her allow us to love her.” As the prayer came forth amidst quiet sobs I heard in my heart God saying, “Let me love you my child. I can see that you have tried and that you have suffered and even that you have failed. Now, put down your hands; let me love you.” God was showing me the sadness in his heart that comes from his children rejecting his love because we don’t think we deserve it. Like Nana and like everyone else, I am afraid. I am afraid to accept the words that I myself spoke to her this afternoon; “Nana, we love you too much for you to ever become a burden.”
There is a heart wrenching little children’s book called “Love You Forever” that I have mentioned before. This book depicts a mother who, no matter what upsetting thing her child does, she comes into his room every night and sings to him “I’ll love you forever, I’ll love you for always, as long as I love you my baby you’ll be.” That is our father’s heart… at least as accurately as I’ve ever heard it.
So please, join me. Get over yourself. Let down your guard. You are not good enough and you never will be. God knew from the start that he was going to have to go through so much heartbreak and so much rejection from a bunch of foolish children who thought they had to make it through life on their own. God did not send his son to die for a bunch of people who deserved everlasting life, he sent his son to die for us. I am about as broken as they come, and yet every night my Father comes into my room and sings to me, “I’ll love you forever, I’ll love you for always, as long as I love you, my baby you’ll be.”
